Case Docket

Summaries of our current and historical civil rights cases.

We have a rich history of litigating important civil rights cases on behalf of the most vulnerable in society. Our cases have smashed remnants of Jim Crow segregation; destroyed some of the nation’s most notorious white supremacist groups; and upheld the rights of minorities, children, women, the disabled and others who faced discrimination and exploitation. Many of our cases have changed institutional practices, stopped government or corporate abuses, and set precedents that helped thousands.

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Date Filed

April 17, 2018

Detained immigrants were forced to work for as little as $1 a day to clean, cook and maintain a privately operated immigrant detention center in Stewart County, Georgia, as part of a scheme to maximize its profits, according to a class action lawsuit the SPLC filed against the private prison...

Date Filed

March 24, 2017

President Trump’s revised executive order banning travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries threatened to break up families and prevent Shi’a Muslims from studying their faith with religious scholars. The Southern Poverty Law Center, Muslim Advocates and a coalition of other...

Date Filed

June 06, 2019

Federal immigration authorities detained thousands of people each month in Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center and Stewart Detention Center, even though many of these individuals were found eligible for release. Hundreds remained in detention because immigration officials refused to set an...

Date Filed

April 18, 2017

The founder of a major neo-Nazi website orchestrated a harassment campaign that relentlessly terrorized a Jewish woman and her family with anti-Semitic threats and messages. The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with its Montana co-counsel, filed suit in federal court on behalf of the woman,...

Date Filed

November 29, 2018

In 2018, the Duval County School Board in Florida began hiring armed civilians, known as “school safety assistants,” to patrol the district’s elementary schools. The program threatened the safety of thousands of students by opening the door for inadequately trained assistants – who are not law...

Date Filed

August 09, 2016

After the federal government failed to release records under the Freedom of Information Act that would shed light on controversial – and potentially unconstitutional – immigration raids in 2016 that took more than 100 women and children from their homes and placed them in a Texas detention...

Date Filed

April 05, 2018

After the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) violated the Constitution by blocking immigrants in isolated civil immigration prisons from accessing lawyers, the SPLC filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the agency and other high-level federal officials.

Date Filed

May 30, 2018

The North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has revoked the licenses of hundreds of thousands of people simply because they cannot afford to pay traffic fines and court costs. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit seeking to end the practice, which disproportionately harms African-American...

Date Filed

December 05, 2017

The city of Corinth, Mississippi, and Municipal Court Judge John C. Ross operated a modern-day debtors’ prison, unlawfully jailing poor people for their inability to pay bail and fines. The SPLC and another civil rights group filed a ...

Date Filed

March 12, 2015

Judicial Correction Services (JCS), a private probation company, collected money from impoverished Alabamians by threatening them with jail when they fell behind on paying fines from traffic violations or other citations in the city of Clanton. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit accusing JCS of violating federal racketeering laws.